If you want to see a demonstration of the bipartisan consensus around bad ideas, read this interview with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Bush talks about his great success in Florida and his strong support for Governor Rick Scott, who has been wreaking havoc with the lives of Florida’s public school teachers. Of course, Bush is thrilled with this and is probably pulling the strings as the Legislature cracks the whip on their backs.

He is a strong supporter of the Common Core state standards and acknowledges that he intervened with ALEC, the far-right group of state legislators, to persuade them not to denounce the national standards. He defends ALEC and tries to paint the group as a group of “center-right” legislators, not the anti-government, pro-privatization lobby that became famous for promoting “Stand Your Ground” laws and voter suppression laws.

He is very happy with President Obama’s Race to the Top, and why shouldn’t he be? Race to the Top contains everything that pleases rightwing Republicans like Bush. It green-lights more testing and more privatization. And it hammers teachers by tying their fate to test scores.

And of course he is enthusiastic about the “reforms” passed by Governor Jindal in Louisiana, Governor Daniels in Indiana, and others on the far-right.

In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine a consensus that stretched from Obama to Jindal? Did you ever dream that education would be the issue that would be common ground for a Democratic President and the rightwing of the Republican party?

I’m not sure that I could stand to read what any Bush has to say about anything anymore. But I guess I’ll have to take one for the team and hope my head doesn’t explode in the meantime. As Lewis Black quips “I took LSD when I was young to prepare myself for times like these”. My bet’s on ol Jebo as the republican side of the corporate duopoly’s coin nominee for prez in 2016.

I never imagined that Obama would embrace right-wing conservative Republican ideas about education. I’d like to know why he has. I get that the corporations which control both parties will make billions on education whether or not Obama gets re-elected.

Although Romney is a disaster, I won’t vote for Obama because his education policies are destroying schools, opportunities for students, and teachers unions across the country — and because he refuses to listen to us.

Why has Axelrod advised Obama to withdraw support from teachers unions and the unions in Wisconsin during his re-election campaign? Would Rove have advised Bush to risk losing the mainstay of his base? Why has Axelrod? They know the blogosphere is alive with real grassroots dissent by knowledgeable voters. But no course corrections have come down.

Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader wrote a great article on how this plays out in Chicago entitled, “The Rahmney plan for schools; Mitt’s approach to education sounds a lot like Mayor Emanuel’s

Maureen, this entire reform package comes from Marc Tucker. It would have been put in place during the Clinton Admin. had the Republicans caved then. They didn’t. THey actually stood up against centralized education.
NOW ..many have caved because they are clueless.

Maureen. The worst thing any of us can do is not vote. If Romney wins the election, we will be even worst off. At least with another Obama Administration, we can pressure the President to put this country back on track when it comes to improving (I hate to use the word reform) education. Maybe we can replace Mr. Duncan with
someone like Diane. I feel it is worth a try. It would be worst to do nothing.

I’m with Donna…Romney is far worse. If you think that Obama is bad for supporting charter schools in so-called “failing” communities, Romney will be far worse for supporting complete privatization of ALL schools in ALL districts.

And before anyone argues that public education is as much local as it is federal, keep in mind the influence a president may have on the governors which can easily lead to the dismantling of our public systems across the board.

A “no” vote for Obama is one step closer to Romney and a complete break-down of the public systems. There go your collective bargaining rights for starters. Romney wants everyone to work for less than they are worth. Obama is picking and choosing (poorly), but so far, he doesn’t appear to want to dismantle public education as a whole by supporting complete privatization of this and many of the social systems in this country.

We need to get in Obama’s face about how Duncan, Rhee, Booker, and the whole “competition” and “schools are failing” nonsense all have the potential to permanently damage our schools.

I know Obama is not popular with this blog’s readers, and I understand why, but we cannot give up and say, “Oh I’m not going to vote for him because I am so upset about his policies–I’m going independent.” The bottom line is…the independent candidates will never be president, so by voting for one, you might be handing another vote to Romney.

So your choice will ultimately be either “the devil you know” or “the devil you know will be worse.” And I fear that by not voting for him, we will be much, much, much worse off because “the devil we know will be worse” will be cutting programs all over creation.

There will be no chance for middle ground with Romney. We need to be smart, strategic, and relentless in this game. There is no place for idealism. This is not to say that we should ever lose sight of our beliefs–we just need to find a way to get our message respected in this climate of opposition to the public schools. We do not have the upper hand here, but we should never back down. Obama is a constitutional scholar–surely we can convince him that privatization even of “some” schools is a misappropriation of public funds and public confidence. We need to bring the education system back to the people–and he needs to lead the way instead of playing the part of “orating by-stander.”

Obama has been known to change his stances before. Granted, he would be moving in a completely other direction if he does which will draw a great deal of criticism from a faction of the misinformed public, but like any kind of change, these things take time. It might still be possible to stop the bleeding. Enough votes of “no confidence” for Arne Duncan’s ideology from the public might send the message to Obama that he is barking up the wrong tree with this competition agenda.

There’s a fairly straightforward explanation for the bipartisan support for destroying the public schools: there is ruling class consensus to do so. It’s a multi-trillion dollar market that is all too ripe for privateering, and crises, whether real or contrived, is a useful vehicle for it.

After all, what are we we talking about when we speak of the free market fundamentalism that has overtaken our government and society over the past thirty years? An endless string of financial crises that then become an explanation/excuse for more deregulation, more privatization, more transferring of the national income from the working and middle class to the 1%, and greater power of Finance over the rest of the economy. Plainly put, it’s the Neoliberal model given free reign to take over a vital public resource.

It has nothing to do with children, except insofar as they can be used as political props, have the data that represents them monetized, and train them for an authoritarian workplace – for those fortunate enough to get work – based on tedium, overwork, intimidation, insecurity and productivity harassment.

In that sense, the tests are the curriculum, since they are the means of creating an environment of passivity, compliance and punishment.

Sound familiar, parents and teachers? It should, since it’s what’s being imposed on us and our kids via the testing and Common Core (a vehicle for reducing teacher autonomy and forcing more high stakes testing) regime.

Until teachers, parents, students and their allies make it clear to politicians of both parties that there will be a severe political price to be paid for supporting the neoliberal/1%’s takeover of the schools, the destruction and demoralization we are experiencing will continue and accelerate.

I get why Bush, Duncan and all the other business people who believe they have the right to privatize public schools and take over that trillion dollar market are demonizing teachers and public schools. I still really don’t understand Obama. Would he or Michelle have had the lives they have without a strong public education system? Either he has handed off education to Arne and just doesn’t care, or he is very deceitful about his true beliefs. I can’t decide which is true. I guess he could just be clueless about the topic. Just don’t get why he has turned a deaf ear to educators

Obama is not clueless, and he has not been deceitful about his true beliefs. He’s been straightforward from the very start about believing in exactly what Arne Duncan is doing. Don’t people remember how Obama publicly praised the firing of all the teachers at Central Falls High School? And why shouldn’t he turn a deaf ear to educators? The AFT and NEA leadership will support him and work for him no matter how much damage he does to public school teachers.

Teachers need to wake up and realize that Obama is not our friend. Arne Duncan is a cabinet member, which means he serves at the pleasure of the President, and Obama can fire him any time he wants. The reason he doesn’t fire him is because he agrees with what he is doing. Obama’s not stupid. Duncan is not doing all this behind Obama’s back, without his knowledge. Obama is not so out of it that he doesn’t know what his own Secretary of Education is doing. Nor should we indulge in the even more ridiculous fiction that Obama is opposed to what Duncan is doing, but that Obama is powerless to stop him.

We need to stop exercising denial, and start realizing that we can’t rely on someone to be our friend just because he is a Democrat. Obama’s changed all that. It used to be that only the Republicans hated us, and that the Democrats pushed back against the GOP’s anti-teacher agenda, and that slowed things down. Thus during the Bush years, test scores were used against schools, but not individual teachers. Now that Obama has adopted the Republican agenda for education, that is no longer happening. We have few, if any, friends left, as the Dems are now hopping on the GOP’s education reform wagon. It’s thanks to Obama that merit pay is now sweeping the nation.

Things will not get better with Obama getting a second term. Four more years of this, and public education as we know it will be gone. I don’t like Romney, but I’m voting for him in the hope that with a Republican in office our unions will stop collaborating with the education reformers and the Democrats might actually start helping us again. And I know I am not the only teacher who has decided to do this, or at the very least vote for a third party.

Anonymous, what do you think the unions will do under Romney? Disband. The end.

At least with Obama, we have a chance to preserve what little there is left of workers’ rights.

I asked someone to post the exact speech that Obama made when praising the firing of those Rhode Island teachers since I cannot find his exact words anywhere. There is only a fragment of a speech that points to this “stance” online, but the context isn’t clear. I was able to find quotes from Duncan online, but nothing that attributes anything exact from Obama’s mouth. Can someone please post it? Thanks.